Japan Is Quietly On A Tear

It's been fascinating to watch Japan's Nikkei index over the past
year.

Starting in the fall, the market went on a rocketship ride,
thanks to the promises made by new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,
whose "Abenomics" platform promised to revive the economy via
aggressive monetary policy, fiscal policy, and structural reforms
designed to jolt the Japanese economy to life.

(Abe actually wrote a great
LinkedIn post on Sunday summarizing how it's all supposed to
work)

Since then, the Nikkei has sort of been seen as a gauge of how
well things are working. Whether it's fair to judge such a regime
by the day-to-day swings (let alone month-to-month) of the stock
market is an open question.

But at first, the surging market was seen as a ringing
endorsement. Then a crash in June made people say it was all a
Ponzi or a bubble.

Anyway, since then things have settled down, and the market is on
a nice tear, without much chatter.